Financial Times 16,170 by Mudd

7 comments on “Financial Times 16,170 by Mudd”

1. I found this to be quite hard, with several such as the partial anagram in PATISSERIE, FRO for ‘back’ in 10d and FRITTER at 19d needing a bit of thought.

   Favourites were the non-hidden DOGGO for ‘Hidden’, the surface for DRIBBLING and SIDECAR for the ‘passenger compartment’.

   Thanks to Mudd and Pete

2. Certainly not concluded in a single run through but nevertheless a gentle effort from Mudd – solutions tended to come in fits and starts. Not helped by my concluding that the answer to 12A was AGIN and persevering with this despite all the evidence suggesting that I was wrong. Once I finally accepted my error the NW corner fell and I was finished.

   Thanks to Mudd and Pete.

3. It must have been easy (relatively) as I managed to finish it. That of course increases the enjoyment.

   21 Grenadines took some finding. I was fixed on “drunk” and tried to make “inebriated” fit , which it did until I got “versatile” for the down slot.

4. Thanks to Mudd and Pete. I failed to get FRITTER but enjoyed HISPANIC.

5. Thanks Mudd and Pete
   Found it on the easier side for JH as well, although did need a couple of sessions – started it late last night and was able to finish it off quite quickly this morning. Smiled at the ‘frock around ankles’ play, liked the ‘red flower’ for LAVA and also thought ‘our home’ was cute.
   Finished in the centre of the puzzle with FROLICKED (quite tricky) and PATISSERIE (where I was misled for ages in making an anagram from ‘shop is past’ to find a lake).

6. Apologies, Pete (If I may),

   Could you explain to me why FRO equates to ‘back’?

7. Mrs Graves, I am glad you asked, for two reasons. The first is that it is simply a good and very pertinent question. The second is that it prompted me to do some research and learn one thing about the word ‘fro’ that I had not known before.

   My Chambers tells me that ‘fro’ as a preposition means ‘from’, that as an adverb it means ‘away’ and that its use is considered obsolete except in the expression “to and fro”. So we might think that ‘fro’ was an abbreviated form of ‘from’. And maybe it was. But the dictionary suggests that it was an English form of the Scots ‘frae’, a word that remains in fairly common use north of the border. An example would be a Glaswegian saying, “ignore that posh bastard, he’s frae Embra”, meaning “ignore that posh bastard, he is from Edinburgh”.

   I can recall hearing ‘fro’ used outside of the expression ‘to and fro’ only once and that in a case where ‘to’ and ‘fro’ were only siightly divorced. Does anyone remember David Kossoff? He was a successful and popular actor in the 1940s and 50s but, as the Guardian put it in an obituary, “Kossoff was famous – and much loved – in the 1960s for his simple and humorous paraphrasing of the Bible into his own stories, which he read on television and radio in the rich tones of an understated Jewish comedian.” Well, my memory is of another comedian doing a take-off of Kossoff and saying, in a brilliantly Kossoffian manner, “He walked to. And fro, as like as not.”

   Okay, I digressed. Back to topic: Can we justify ‘back’ cluing FRO, as in 10dn? I think we can very well even though Chambers does not explicitly condone it. Probably the best synonym for “to and fro” is “back and forth”. This puts the two elements in reverse order but clearly draws an identity between ‘fro’ and ‘back’.

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